Sunday, 21 December 2008

Slavery lives on

I posted some time ago on the Great Slavery Wheeze, whereby enterprising ‘descendants of slaves’ were building up, with the aid of the Victim Industry, an apology for slavery from former Western slaving countries. There was also a little matter of compensation – not for the money, you must understand, just the principle. If you read the post in questionyou’ll see how, using their ‘logic’ I worked out that we in the West actually were owed money by the slave descendants.

Now, as every schoolboy knows, slavery was abolished by the West, specifically Britain, over 200 year ago. Unfortunately, especially for the slaves, it appears that there are more slaves world-wide today than there ever were in history. We have Anti-Slavery International (ASI) to thank for this interesting information.

So the Brits and the Yanks are at it again, are they? Well, no, not quite.

Rescued Sudanese slavesSo where, then? Well, quelle surprise, mainly in Africa, from the very people who are now trying to shake down the rest of us. It’s most severe in Dystopia West Africa, where countries such as Benin And Togo provide slave for their wealthier neighbours such as Nigeria, Gabon and Ghana, where they’re forced to work in the agricultural, domestic and sex industries. In fact UNICEF estimates that no fewer than 200,000 children from West and Central Africa are sold into slavery each year.

The abduction and operation of the practice involves unspeakable cruelty and general abuse.

Now when I hear the words cruelty and abuse, my mind naturally turns to the Religion Of Peace. A little further research and, ah yes, there it is.

Arab militias rode in to her village on horseback, firing their guns. When the adults fled, the children and cattle were rounded up and made to walk north for five days before they were divided between members of the raiding party. The report goes on to quote one rescued victim:

"My abductor told me that I was his slave and I had to do all the work he told me to - fetching water and firewood, looking after animals and farming.When I was 12, he said he wanted to sleep with me. I could not refuse because I was a slave, I had to do everything he wanted, or he could have killed me."

According to a study by the Kenya-based Rift Valley Institute, some 11,000 young boys and girls were seized and taken across the internal border - many to the states of South Darfur and West Kordofan. Most were forcibly converted to Islam, given Muslim names and told not to speak their mother tongue.

Ali - Yemeni slave in SaudiPhysical mutilation is practiced upon these slaves not only to prevent escape, but to enforce the owners' ideologies. According to an ASI report: "Kon, a thirteen-year-old Dinka boy, was abducted by Arab nomads and taken to a merchant's house. There he found several Dinka men hobbling, their Achilles tendons cut because they refused to become Muslims. Threatened with the same treatment the boy converted."

The report goes on “Animist tribes in southern Sudan are frequently invaded by Arab militias from the North, who kill the men and enslave the women and children.”

“Kill the men and enslave the women and children”. Now where the hell could they have got an idea like that? Well, from the Raving Psychopath 'Prophet' himself, no less!

I take the following from another postI made, and in turn take it from ‘sacred’ Islamic texts.SahihBukhari, volume 5, Book 59, Number 512: Narrated Anas: Then the inhabitants of Khaibar came out running on the roads. The Prophet had their men killed, their offspring and woman taken as captives. Safiya was amongst the captives, She first came in the share of Dahya Alkali but later on she belonged to the Prophet (prophet took her away from him after giving Dahya two women and five men in exchange for Safia, Ref. Sahih Muslim 8:3328) .

Spot any connection? That's why slavery is rampant throughout the Islamic world. They're just doing what 'the perfect man' did all the time.

One of Pakistan's 'Shackled Slaves'Anyway, the question is, if there’s more slavery today than ever, why is the West being singled out for reparations, 200 years after we put a stop to it? The answer of course is, because we’re the West. We’re seen as naïve fools who’ll fall for any cock-and-bull story as long as it’s from our non-white brethren. And they’re right.

You’ll wait a long time to see claims going in against their fellow Africans, Arabs, or Indians/Pakistanis, where hundreds of thousands of shackled slaves are still held.

Well written article Savant.Most whites in the northern hemisphere have not got the vaguest clue of the insensible and incredible degree of the barbarity Africans are capable of...then you lot bitch about the Gypsies. LOL!!

Now, as every schoolboy knows, slavery was abolished by the West, specifically Britain, over 200 year ago.

I don't know what most schoolchildren know, but slavery was abolished by Great Britain only 168 years ago.

More important, you seem to have deliberately picked the first Western nation to actively discourage slavery and the slave trade. Most Western nations, of course, didn't act so quickly. The U.S., as we all know, didn't abolish slavery until a quarter-century later, and then only because it was convenient in the aftermath of a civil conflict.

Spot any connection? That's why slavery is rampant throughout the Islamic world.

As I'm sure you know, slavery is also condoned in passages in the Jewish and Christian scriptures.

Your entire post would make far more sense if slavery were, in fact, specific to Islamic countries.

In fact, however, as the sources you cite will tell you, slavery is common in many countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, including places where Christianity, Islam, and other religions are dominant.

Anyway, the question is, if there’s more slavery today than ever, why is the West being singled out for reparations, 200 years after we put a stop to it?

First, as you pointed out, the West didn't put an end to slavery. It only put an end to its own practice of slavery.

Since when did simply ending one's own crimes justify taking the moral high ground with others? Or claiming immunity from claims about past wrongdoing?

Second, in what way is the West being singled out? The entire world is the focus of the modern anti-slavery campaign, and especially those countries with the most slavery.

Yes, the West is being asked to atone for its slave-owning past, but no other part of the world is exempt from that.

The reparations movement simply asks that the West acknowledge the darker parts of its rise to global preeminence, and account for the benefits of slavery which are still enjoyed in the West today.

Don't quibble James. When slavery is now more prevalent than it ever was it's not very productive to say the west abolished it 'only' 168 years ago. My point is that it's still being practiced, as you yourself acknowledge.

True, old religious texts supprt slavery, but dont ask me to defend them! However, today slavery is most prominent by far in Islamic countries, and I have no record of Jesus slaughtering some tribe or other and enslaving their womenfolk, as 'the Prophet' so proudly did.

My main point is that the west has long abandoned it and outlawed it, while other 'cultures' still maintain it. Yet, only the West is the subject of the shakedown.

The slave TRADE was abolished in 1807, James. The slaves themselves were freed in 1834. No Christian nation condones slavery now, and that has to be an improvement. And, yes, cleaning up one's own affairs DOES give us the right to call out other coutries that have wrong practices..

I'm sorry if you felt I was quibbling, Savant. I thought that my point about your selective recollection of history was actually quite important in understanding your argument, since in fact the West took generations more to abolish slavery than you were suggesting. You seem bent on absolving the West of its crimes in connection with slavery, and I just don't believe that history is so black-and-white.

Your point that slavery is still being practiced is, of course, tremendously important. However, even the U.S. government admits that much of the current trafficking in slaves directly involves the U.S., and modern slavery elsewhere is highly dependent on the acquiescence of the West.

This is why I find your implication, that the West is somehow relatively innocent in slavery, then and now, to be difficult to understand.

today slavery is most prominent by far in Islamic countries

This is simply untrue, Savant, as I tried to point out in my previous post. Slavery is practiced in many countries in the world, relatively few of them being majority Islamic nations.

My main point is that the west has long abandoned it and outlawed it, while other 'cultures' still maintain it.

Again, this is untrue. The West did gradually outlaw slavery, finally managing to do so towards the end of the 19th century, but it has hardly abandoned the practice.

True, there are no longer large plantations in the Americas, filled with laboring slaves. However, even the U.S. government acknowledges how much slavery still exists in the U.S. and other western nations. This is not the "slavery" of low wages and such, but people held in bondage against their will.

If slavery is outlawed in all Islamic nations, as well as in the West, and it still persists in many Western and Islamic nations, how can you say that the West has abandoned slavery and the Islamic world has not?

More importantly, why would you set this up as a comparison between Christianity and Islam? Neither religion is clean on this issue, either historically or today, and in fact the historical record makes it abundantly clear that neither religion was ever the driving force behind slavery (or its abolition).

And yet, even the U.S. government officially acknowledges the large-scale trafficking of slaves into the U.S. and other Western countries today.

How can you say that the West isn't still struggling to implement its ideals with regard to slavery?

James, you're trying to equate the west and Islamic treatment of slaves over the last 2 hundred years. How daft can you get?

I haven't tried to equate the treatment of slaves by different societies, "Anonymous." In fact, I'm the one who argued, above, that we shouldn't try to do so.

I have pointed out that the West only decided to end its slavery comparatively recently (the U.S., for instance, 143 years ago, compared to about 400 years of Western slavery in the New World).

I've also pointed out that the West hasn't managed to eliminate slavery.

How, then, can anyone say that the West can approach other societies with entirely clean hands?

We can say that we aspire to eliminate slavery, that we've done so in the law, and that we've made great strides in eliminating slavery in practice. But so have all other countries.

I would also point out that each of you seems to keep slipping and talking about Islamic countries, and not other countries in general.

In fact, contemporary slavery is not predominantly a phenomenon of majority-Muslim nations. I'd be interested to know where you got such misinformation about slavery, since it seems to be dramatically affecting your understanding of the causes of modern slavery, as well as how you believe it should be addressed.

Yes, Savant, it's true: all other countries in the world can also say, along with us, that they've eliminated slavery by law and that they've made great strides in eliminating slavery in practice.

(The exceptions, of course, are countries which never allowed slavery by law, or which had virtually no slavery in practice.)

Can you think of an exception to this? You keep harping on Muslim countries, for some reason, so let's consider the fact that all Muslim countries prohibit slavery by law and those which once had high levels of slavery have reduced slavery significantly (if not entirely).

Slavery does not "lives on because, despite the best efforts of the west, other countries are still practicing it."

In fact, the West doesn't do much at all to stop slavery. We admit that we have slavery in the U.S., and we willingly tolerate slavery in other countries (even making excuses for their delays in eliminating it).